I have 14 years of experience in visual communications, 8 of them in advocacy campaigning. I make content that travels beyond the people who already agree.
As a digital campaigner I was responsible for producing social content with the @greenpeace Instagram as the key account.
I’ve worked as a creative producer on Greenpeace International’s oil campaign. Our main channel is organic Instagram. The median reach and engagement of the content I created was 276% above the median for Greenpeace’s Instagram.
In 2020 I led the renewal of Greenpeace Finland’s social channels. We surveyed our followers (n≈700) about what they wanted, then produced content to match, including experiments with memes, which suited the organisation’s brand. Instagram reach and engagement tripled (2021 vs 2019).
In social video the first seconds decide everything: they have to capture attention. I’ve also noticed that the content that reaches the widest audience carries messages that feel obvious to us environmental activists.
Watch on InstagramAfter learning that Instagram’s algorithm rewards the time an audience spends with a post, I started making carousels. I condense the topic into a short, shareable format. First, I look for a meme that captures the message, grabs attention and triggers an emotional reaction.
View on InstagramHow do you boil down oil companies’ billions in profit into plain language?
Watch on InstagramMy contribution. I developed the idea for adapting the trend, curated the images, designed the layout and wrote the copy. Effective social media branding needs to “look like the internet”: to adopt the visual languages that emerge online.
Lesson learned. Greenpeace’s audience expects us to expose who profits from environmental destruction and give people something to act against. Although the post achieved five times the channel’s usual reach and engagement, it failed to identify clear villains or give the audience a role to play. This resulted in little conversation in the comments.
View on Instagram